Simple Past Tense

The simple past tense, or the preterite as it is called in German, is the prefered tense in written German. This tense is also called as the narrative past. It is mostly the tense of the stories, novels, and newspapers. With a few exceptions, especially the verbs “haben” and “sein”, you won’t experience that this tense being used often in the spoken language.

The conjugation of regular verbs

To conjugate the simple past tense of regular verbs, drop the infinitive ending and –add the following endings

Ich -te

Du -test

Er/sie/es -te

Wir -ten

Ihr -tet

sie/Sie –ten

For example, let’s take a regular verb “kaufen”

Ich kaufte

Du kauftest

Er/sie/es kaufte

Wir kauften

Ihr kauftet

sie/Sie kauften

If the verb ends in “t” or “d”, you need to put an extra “-e” to the endings. For instance “heiraten” (to marry)

Ich heiratete

Du heiratetest

Er/sie/es heiratete

Wir heirateten

Ihr heiratetet

Sie/sie heirateten

Modal verbs take the same endings, however their stem change: “durf-”, “konn-“, “muss-”, “moch-“. The stems of wollen and sollen do not change.

So that for example “dürfen” is conjugated as

Dürfen

Ich durfte (I was allowed)

Du durftest (you were allowed)

Er/sie/es durfte (he/she/it was allowed)

Wir durften (we were allowed)

Ihr durft (you were allowed)

sie/Sie durfen (they/you were allowed)

In this sense, there are other verbs which are similar to modal verbs, i.e. when they are conjugated in the preterit; the same endings as introduced above are used but their stem changes:

nennen: nannte

wissen: wusste

bringen: brachte

brennen: verbrannte

The three of the most important German verbs, sein, haben and werede, are irregular in the preterit and they are also used often in the spoken language in the preterit. Their conjugations are as follows:

Sein

Ich war

Du warst

Er/sie/es war

Wir waren

Ihr wart

Sie/sie waren

Haben

Ich hatte

Du hattest

Er/sie/es hatte

Wir hatten

Ihr hattet

Sie/sie hatten

Werden

Ich wurde

Du wurdest

Er/sie/es wurde

Wir wurden

Ihr wurdet

Sie/sie wurden

Other important irregular verbs and their conjugations in preterit are given in the vocabulary section below

Separable and inseparable verbs

As we saw previously, some prefixes are separable and some are not. As in the present tense, you need to put the separable prefix at the end of the sentence:

“Wir kauften immer Sonttags ein”

In case of inseparable verbs, as the name suggests, should not be separated when conjugated in the preterit.